BA (Hons) Graphic Communication

The modules on our Graphic Communication degree have been strategically considered to help you develop and progress from ‘design student’ to ‘design professional’. You will learn new ways to research and react as you progress through our ‘Crawl, Walk and Run’ approach to design education.

The degree starts with building a solid foundation in core skills:

• Visualisation for Communication – How we use the principles and elements of design to form visual messages
• Design Thinking in Practice – How we recognize and utilize the process of design to navigate from concept to prototype to product
• Design Research Methods – Understanding how to better understand challenges through research perspective and viewpoints

The course is your creative playground and in your final year is all about you, your independence, your craft, and your professional profile. This is where you will fine tune your portfolio and focus your career pathway. Your course ends with a graduate showcase that exhibits your work in a professional networking event.

Modules in Detail

Year One

Visualisation for Communication (Practical)

This module explores the principles and elements of visual communication and aims to initiate and encourage design practice. Students will learn an array of skills from colour theory to hierarchy through this playful module as they attempt to solve their first design brief.

Design Thinking in Practice (Practical)

All Designers have a process, a series of techniques and methods that they enlist to solve complex communication problems. This teams-based module encourages student design teams to put design processes into practice as they tackle their first live design brief. Students will gain insights into team-working and management, along with design processes and their delegation.

Design Research Methods (Written)

Whether it be a survey, a database, an interview, or a collection of visual samples, it is critical that a designer learns how to collect, collate, interrogate, and interpret information. Design Research Methods teaches students how to conduct an array of research methods to inspire creativity and better understand the core factors behind a design challenge.

User Experience Design (Practical)

The field of User Experience Design (UXD)is one of the most rapidly expanding arenas within Graphic Communication. Helping others navigate the world is a key aspect of the designer toolkit and practice, whether it be navigating a store or simply finding something to watch using an online service, UXD encourages human-centered understanding and design psychology at the heart of the problem-solving process. Students will learn to design a working prototype of a mobile application.

Change by Design (Practical)

This practice module explores the practice of visual communication and its impact towards social / political change. Students will learn how to utilise Graphic Communication to manage change through persuasion. How might we encourage people to get active through a visual call to action?

Strategic Branding in the 21st Century (Written and Practical)

What does it mean to Brand something? What is brand behaviour, and how might we explore design to implement and foster brand value? This module introduces students to branding, diagnostical reporting of an existing brand and the proposal of a new concept.

Technical Instruction

Each module on year one has a series of technical instructors supporting the array of software applications that need to be learned.

Year Two

Data Stories and Infographics (Written and Practical)

We live in a complex world that’s permeated with data, statistics, information, and instruction. This module explores the spectrum of data gathering, interrogation, interpretation and how Designers utilise this knowledge to produce meaningful design.

Design Challenge (Practical)

Its national competition time and your chance to show the world your creativity in this exciting module. Design Challenge connects students to a selection of challenging design briefs set by some of the world’s leading brands. Competition modules are rare on the second year of a degree program and we’re happy to not only deliver this module but also announce that we’ve had a history of second year student winners.

Design Lab (Written)

We live in a rapidly developing world, especially concerning technologically. What does this mean for the Designer? Their skillsets and their applicability for employment? Design Lab encourages students to explore where design was, where it is and where it’s heading.

Specialist Module 1 (Practical)

This module explores Motion Graphics and the importance this plays in the designer toolkit. Students further develop their skills in visual storytelling through timeline-based graphics. Excited by TV show title sequences? Moving brands? Animated diagrams? This module explores how Designers move from static to motion.

Specialist Module 2 (Practical)

This module is more commonly known as ‘Playful Type’ and encourages students to push their creativity and experimentation with craft and digital. The module is focused on typography:

• Type formation and structure
• Type as an art form
• Type as representation
• Type as a Navigational device and type as a provider of clerical information

Design Safari (Written and Practical)

What is a Design Agency? How do they work? Two of the many questions that will be asked as students form teams and embark on a journey to propose their own strategy for a design agency. This module is team-based and requires students to connect with design agencies to gain a professional insight into agency practices from pricing to pitching.

Year Three

Boot Camp (Practical and Presentations)

Commercial Designers work to tight deadlines with limited timeframes and deal with constant last minute client changes. Boot Camp teaches time, time-management, project management and dealing with unexpected client changes as students face 5 consecutive 5-day design briefs set by Design agencies.

Design Futures (Practical and Presentations)

Design futures initiates your final year of study and marks the start of your independence as a commercial designer. This module is about your professional brand; your portfolio; Your professional practice and development. Design futures is heavily focused towards employment and progression into the creative industries and provides mock interview experiences and portfolio surgeries with design agencies.

Global Design Cultures (Practical and Presentations)

It’s competition time again, as year three students are asked to select a design competition that aligns with their commercial practice and intended career pathway.

Research Project I (Investigation)

Research Project I and II represents the final major project of your studies and course. Research project I requires the publication of your research skills (report) in practice as you investigate a design challenge that you feel passionate towards gaining further insights. This is your opportunity to think big and work in a specific field within the subject area.

Research Project II (Practical and Exhibition)

This module initiates with a self-directed design brief based on the insights gained in part I (investigation). This self-direct final major project requires and exhibition of outcomes, prototypes, products and solutions to the issues and challenges found in your published research and investigation report.

The Graphic Communication course is comprised of both fixed lectures and seminars delivered by visiting industry professionals. The fixed team is a blend of industry practitioners, academics, and researchers. Visiting lectures range from design business proprietors to freelance designers with specialist skillsets in key disciplines within the subject area. The course is highly practical in delivery and continuously focused on the development of you, your professionalism, your digital skillset and creative confidence.

Lectures range from contextual lectures, practical workshops, studio support sessions and design critiques. The campus has a range of Adobe Credited digital technicians that support a plethora of design software applications taught both online and on campus.

The course provides a range of assessment methods that are all intended to develop expected transferable and employable skills.

Assessment methods to expect on this course are:

Practical assessment

Practical assessment varies from the submission of your design process work and outcome for assessment and review. This mostly takes the form of an assessment mark sheet that not only identifies areas of award but also areas for improvement to aid your progression.

Some practical modules end with a Design Critique, A show and tell whereby the cohort exhibit their work and an informal setting for feedback. Students will be expected to informally explain their work and discuss their project in a safe-space setting intended to increase confidence, vernacular, and terminological usage when challenged to define and describe their design work or process journey.

Presentation assessment

The course has several models assessed by the presentation assessment methods. These are primarily intended to increase a student’s confidence when discussing / pitching their ideas / outcomes. Presenting work with confidence and demonstrating defensive knowledge around the design process is an expected skill within this discipline.

Industry professional assessment

The course works with several industry professionals and clients and therefore student can expect to receive active feedback from a broad range of professionals.